When The Dust Settles
by IndigoNightandRayneStorm
Summary: When all is said and done, Damon is alone. AU. Character death. Oneshot.


**Title: **When The Dust Settles

**Author: **Indigo Night

**Feedback: **Yes please

**Summary:** When all is said and done, Damon is alone.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Vampire Diaries or the characters.

**Spoilers: **AU, so not realy.

**Pairing: **Implied Stefan/Elena, Bonnie/Jeremy, Caroline/Tyler. Damon/Alaric friendship, or slash if you want to read it that way.

**Warnings:** AU. Character death. Angst. Slash, if you squint.

**Author's Note:** I'm not really sure what this is, because it started out something entirely different and got seriously off track. But I kinda like it, so I decided to just leave it as it is. Read, Review,

**ENJOY!**

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They stood silently over what was left of Klaus. Somehow, miraculously, they had won. But at a price, a heavy one; they were surrounded by the blood and bodies of both his allies and their own. But it was over now.

Elena clung to Stefan, and he held her just as tightly, Jeremy supported Bonnie so she didn't topple over from exhaustion, while Caroline soothed Tyler until he could control his wolf again. Damon stood alone.

His face was devoid of emotion as ever, but his shoulders were tight, the only outward expression of his pain. All of the others were busy seeing to the living, or at least quasi-living, so without a word, Damon began collecting the dead.

The werewolf remains he carried out to the back of the house. They were drifters and runaways, there was no one left to miss them. He would burn the bodies later.

He didn't know what to do with Luka's body; seemingly unharmed but for the blood that had leaked from his nose, the only physical sign of how the magic had burned him up inside. No one knew where Jonas was, and the fabled sister had never appeared.

He supposed it would be up to Bonnie, for lack of anyone else, so he pulled the body from the wreckage and set it aside for her.

He collected the rings of power from the vampire corpses, no sense letting them go to waste, then dumped the bodies out back next to the werewolves.

He paused for just a moment longer over the corpse of the woman he had once believed was the love of his life. It would have been impossible to read the expression on his face, had anyone been looking, his feelings too complex for his facial muscles to define them. Then silently he pocketed her ring, and set her out with the rest.

Lastly he turned to the one human body amidst the debris. The human who had had almost no personal stake in any of this; the human who should have been allowed to live out his life in blissful ignorance. A cut split his neck, like a grizzly second smile, blood slowly congealing beneath him, his eyes open and unseeing. Despite having seen many, many corpses in his unnatural life, the sight of this one produced something in Damon that he could not name, that he had never experienced before.

He knelt beside the body of the man who had been his confidant, his companion, and his only friend, heedless of the blood seeping through his pants. Carefully, Damon closed Alaric's eyes and lifted him out of the pool of blood before laying him gently on the couch; the couch on which they had once shared so many late night drinks, the couch where their unique bond had formed.

Finally, the work done for now, Damon went to rescue what was left of the liquor cabinet.

*VD*VD*VD*

It was hours later when Stefan finally pried himself away from Elena for a few moments.

Everyone else had drifted off to lick their wounds and comfort each other, leaving the house in a heavy silence as though even the building itself was mourning the tragedies it had seen.

Damon sat alone in the living room, next to Alaric's cold, lifeless body. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey dangled from his hand as he kept vigil through the night, waiting until the early dawn when he would arrange the appearance of an accident to explain the teacher's death.

Stefan paused at the sight. Elena was waiting upstairs, he'd promised to be right back with a snack for her, but Damon look so… unlike himself.

"I'm fine," Damon informed him, and though his voice was soft and somewhat muted, it still held all its usual sardonic coolness.

"You don't look it," was Stefan's frank reply. For over a hundred and fifty years a massive gap had separated the two brothers, but recently Stefan had held out hope that maybe, just maybe that gap had lessened somewhat, that maybe they could re-learn to be the brother's they had once been. But in that moment he knew that the abyss was as wide as ever.

He longed to comfort Damon, but he had no idea how. When they were children, he would have simply thrown his arms around his big brother's waist and with childish naivety informed him that everything was okay. As a young man, he would have gripped his Damon's shoulder and given some words of solace. A few decades ago he could have scoffed at the idea of Damon needing comfort.

But now he could do nothing but stand there, separated by a few impenetrable feet, and offer awkward words of uncertainty.

Damon just snorted and took another long swig of whiskey. "I'll live."

Stefan nodded, but still he hesitated. Several moments of silence passed, in which Damon may have forgotten Stefan was even there.

"I'm leaving," Damon muttered eventually, so softly Stefan couldn't be certain if Damon was talking to himself or not. "Tomorrow, after… he's taken care of."

The words were calm and rational, but Stefan's chest clenched with worry. All the changes, all the progress, in Stefan's opinion for the better, all the growth Damon had experienced in the past couple months; was he just going to throw it all away now and return to the cruel, unfeeling person he had once been?

"Why?" Stefan asked, in what he hoped was a tone at least almost as unaffected as Damon's own.

Damon just shrugged in a parody of indifference. "Katherine's gone, Klaus is dead, Elena's safe. There's nothing to keep me here anymore." He didn't mention Alaric, but that too rang in the silence between them.

Faintly, Stefan could hear Elena getting restless upstairs. She's expecting him to get back. He wasn't supposed to be gone long. But he's reluctantly to leave Damon like this.

"Go on, Stefan. She's waiting." For all the enigmas that Damon had always presenting Stefan, in reverse, Damon had never had any trouble reading his younger brother. "I'll be fine."

Reluctantly Stefan turned to go, but once more Damon's voice called him back. Damon hadn't intended to say them, like so many other things he didn't say, but this time they just slipped out.

"It doesn't change anything, I know that, but… for what it's worth, I understand now."

Confused, Stefan asked, "Understand what?"

"Why you forced me to change."

Stefan had no idea what to say to that, he was utterly floored. But Damon didn't want a response, so maybe that was a good thing.

It was against Stefan's better judgment to leave Damon alone after that, but Elena needed him. He had time, he told himself; Damon wouldn't leave right away, he could talk sense into him later.

Later, that's what he always told himself. They had plenty of time.


End file.
